by Craig Richardson, E&E Legal President As Appearing on InsideSources

Nearly every American depends on petroleum products in their daily lives, and today they can rest more soundly, for now at least.

Last month, a New York State Supreme Court judge found that the state’s attorney general failed to establish evidence that ExxonMobil engineered a “longstanding fraudulent scheme … to deceive investors and the investment community … concerning the company’s management of the risks posed to its business by climate change.”

The decision followed three-and-a-half years of trial, investigation and pretrial discovery that required ExxonMobil to produce millions of pages of documents, dozens of witnesses, and millions of dollars in legal costs. The decision is a major blow to climate activists aiming to bankrupt energy producers as a means of keeping America’s vast energy resources locked in the ground. Their planned wave of litigation intended to achieve through the courts what they cannot in the legislature. Luckily for the American consumers, this lawsuit turned out to be a dud.

But New York’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil is just one of many climate suits, several still pending in the courts.